Beginning in August, the Federal Bureau of Prisons will start transferring the first of about 1,150 women incarcerated at the low-security Pembroke Road facility to other institutions, FCI spokesman Matthew Marske said Wednesday.

Once that process is complete, probably by the end of the year, the first male inmates will move in. Marske said the change is due to overcrowding at existing federal facilities for low-security male inmates.

The change will not affect the Danbury camp, located near the prison, which houses 210 low-security female inmates, nor the 1,150 staff members who work there. The camp will house women only, Marske said.

Sunday also marks the 37th anniversary of a fire that began in the prison's washroom that killed five male inmates.

Danbury firefighters weren't called until 15 minutes after the blaze was discovered, and a subsequent investigation revealed shortcomings in the prison's fire-protection system. The tragedy led to safety improvements at federal prisons across the country.

Although it's considered a low-security institution, a number of women are serving long prison sentences for offenses ranging from human trafficking to murder.

Marske said the inmates will be "evaluated on a case-by-case basis" for transfer to other institutions, including a new women's prison scheduled to open in Alabama later this year. Twenty-eight of the 116 facilities operated by the Bureau of Prisons across the country house female inmates, but only seven, including Danbury, are all women, and about 7 percent of the approximately 219,000 inmates are female.

"I grew up across the street when it was all men and Gordon Liddy and Sun Myung Moon were there, and there was never a concern about security," said Boughton, a situation he doesn't expect to change when the male inmates return.

"In the past several years, we've developed a strong relationship with the administration, and we've used the prisoners from the camp for community service work, especially in cleaning up blighted areas," he said.